Sweet Victory on her Lips
by SweetAngels123
Summary: She tasted the sweat, the blood, and the dirt.


She isn't as surprised as she should be.

That the man that Naruto called father identified himself as Minato Namikaze. The forth hokage, she thinks, the yellow flash, she'd stared at his picture in her text book in the academy while Iruka-sensei lectured on once.

Back then, Naruto, he'd been seated right down the isle from her, looking at them now she can see nothing but the same cornflower yellow hair and sky blue eyes and she can't figure out why she never even considered...

They look so similar.

In hindsight it is painstakingly obvious who Naruto's father is.

The blast startles her out of her thoughts and she winces against the pain of a thousand tiny rocks biting into her exposed flesh. The man - the forth Hokage - smiles down at her and although she can't see Naruto's face she can feel how much more relaxed he is now in the way his shoulders have slumped down.

"Thank you for accelerating Naruto's recovery...are you..." His face brightens, and yes, the resemblance in uncanny. "You wouldn't happen to be his girlfriend would you?"

No, she wants to say, he's like my brother, I don't think of Naruto like that. But Naruto beats her to it. Or at least the speaking part.

"I mean if your splitting hairs, I guess - ummm, the thing is...yeah, you could say that!"

She blanches thinking of Hinata and how minutes ago she and Naruto had been standing together, hands interlocked, she claps him upside the head before she can even realize she did it, her palms glowing as she returned to healing.

"That hurt! I thought you were supposed to heal me!"

She rolls her eyes and removes one palm, running it over his head she located a small bump and healed it with a flick of her wrist. The forth chuckles, "heh, I leave my son in your capable hands."

He's gone with a leap.

"Naruto, he came out of nowhere, why does it seem like you were expecting this? Did you sense him?"

Naruto nods.

"I felt their chakra's while I was in Kyuubi mode, the others aren't far behind him."

Others, she thinks, what others?

Her question is answered a minute later when three legends join the fourth. She wonders who summoned them, only for that too to be answered moments later by the third. Orohimaru, she thinks, he was dead, who would even have the gall to summon him, that man who she can only ever think of as monster.

The hokages step foreword then, joining the rest of the alliance, and then the beast that had been sitting in status started to charge and she found it hard to think that even the hokages, as strong as they are, could ever stop that beast.

And then the forth burst into light, looking so much like his son, and a magnificent red barrier springs up around the creature and she thinks that perhaps not all is lost.

Confident that things are handled at least for the moment she pushes more chakra into Naruto, becoming aware of nothing else but the bones and the muscles and the vessels she was healing.

She falls into a sort of trance, her eyes glazing over as she set her sights on the inside of Naruto's body instead of the battlefield she hopes that it will allows her to heal at least three times faster than if her attention had been divided, hopes that the risk will allow the both of them to be up and fighting ready that much sooner.

Finishing with the larger internal injuries, the rips and the breaks, she concentrates on the microscopic level sending her chakra through Naruto's body, seeking out any more internal injuries, pleased to find none, she began to knit together the varies large external ones.

She's just finishing when Naruto, who had been silent seemingly respecting that she needed at least relative silence — although a battlefield could never be classified as silent — to finish healing broke her out of her trance.

"Fashionably late...eh, Sasuke?"

She froze, the chakra in her palms immediately being redirected to her arms and legs in case she needed to grab Naruto and get them out of there, but wait - he's not preparing to attack, in confusion she tilts her head to the side, pink bangs falling into her eyes and tangling with her lashes.

"...Sasuke-kun...?"

He tilts his head at her.

"Sakura, huh?"

And there is quiet in the world that only seemed to be big enough to contain three after that, except there isn't, because she can hear her heart beating a mile a minute in her ears, the sound a bizarre mix between the flight of the bumblebee and an executioners march.

She can hear the rest of her year approaching, hear Ino and Shikamaru and Choji, can see them, but subconsciously she's back years ago when everything was simpler, she's thinking of everything they'd been through since then, she's thinking of the tragedy of a boy who became a monster.

She hears Choji and Shikamaru's warnings to Ino and she looks up moving her hands from Naruto's shoulders and letting them hang at her side, furiously pushing chakra towards her forehead because she couldn't trust him. Not yet anyway, not until he proved his intentions.

"What are you doing here, Sasuke-kun?"

She doesn't mean for it to sound as tired as it does.

"A lot has happened, and I've decided to protect Kohana. Furthermore — I'm going to become Hokage!"

She flinches back in disgust — no, she thinks, Naruto will. He deserves it, he's worked the hardest for it, he's suited for it. Not me, not you, him. You don't have the right to take that from him. Not after what you already took from us, what you broke. I won't let you do this.

" — I forgot to laugh! I didn't know missing-nin could tell jokes! Do you understand the meaning behind the word Hokage, dumbass?"

"Regardless of what you've been through, that simply won't be possible. Do you really think that —"

"— we'll forget what you did up until now?"

He sighs, "I figured you couldn't just let bygones be bygones."

So arrogant! Had he always been like this? Had she let prepubescent hormones blind her to this? Was love really all it took to blind someone? Was she that foolish once? Was she foolish still for loving him despite his blatant personality faults.

"The hokage's are the reason we're currently in this predicament. So I'll become Hokage to make sure nothing like this happens again!"

Naruto pushed himself up then and she followed wary of what he was about to do next. They couldn't be sure that Sasuke didn't have something up his sleeve and it was better safe than sorry.

"I'm the one that'll become Hokage!"

She almost smiles.

"It really does bring a tear to my eye that we have so many candidates for Hokage but — we kinda have bigger problems here to take care of!"

Naruto nods and turns to her, and she prays that he's about to tell her that it time to fight, prays that he's not seeing someone from the past, prays that he'll show her that he believes her to be as good a shinobi as Sasuke, as himself.

"Thanks for healing me, Sakura-chan, but now it's your turn to rest up! Sasuke, come on!"

No, she thinks, of course not, because even if its in the guise of resting up, she knows its because he doesn't think she can fight right up alongside them. That they'll have to protect her.

They're gone in a moment and she's right behind them.

She lands with a solid thud that has all eyes on her including the four that she desperately needs to see her, the her that's standing next to them not the her of the past.

"Did you really think I was going to sit back and play the damsel in distress? Tsunade-sama trains her disciples as ferociously as the other sannin. Just a bit more — once I've collected enough chakra I'll be able to unleash my full power — after all, I'm a member of team seven."

All those years ago, when they'd taken the chunin exams, she'd let them fight her battles until they couldn't — she pushed more chakra towards her forehead, she was so close — and she'd made an oath that she'd stand beside them, not in their shadows.

But they'd improved faster than she had. They'd improved at such a rate that she'd given up. She'd thought that they'd always be more powerful, she'd tried to tell herself that she was content with living in the shadows that she was content with a life where she'd have to rely on others to protect her.

But she'd never really believed it, and then Sasuke had left, and she'd been able to do nothing to stop him, she'd never felt as powerless as she did that night. Then Naruto left to train and she had to watch him go — and a wise woman had told her some wise words and —

With a final burst the seal burst into life on her forehead and she surged forward a piece of the jubi collapsing beneath her fist as the earth did the same, shattering into jagged pieces.

She licked her lips, tasting the dirt and the sweat.

It tasted like victory.


End file.
